Pros
Legacy brand and used to have a great employee base
The company was a tremendous turnaround story from 2009 thru 2013, with best year in in 2013.

Cons
New CEO came in and shortly thereafter the entire executive team has resigne,d as well as most other key employees. First year with new exective team revenue went down $4-5MM, not surprising.
CEO is focused on bringing consumer GPS units to the market (in 2015????).
No raises, bonsues or 401k in years and morale is terrible.
Parent company is under SEC review
Most talent that hasn't left, is looking actively.
I would look elsewhere for employment as a downward spiral is in process.

Advice to Senior Management
Start over with new leadership, go back to what lead the turn around.

Pros
Love the people that I work with. They have become my friends. Like my work, though sometimes too much is expected from us. Company seems to have gotten past its financial troubles and we are told that we are doing very well. New products are creating excitement in our customer segment. Feel good about our future prospects.

Cons
I will admit to being very down on the company until recently. Lots of management turnover. Each new person brings strange and different ideas. Makes continuity hard. However, the company is now creating a lot of new products, including traditional print products that look good. Believe we will grow as a company.

Pros
Rand has few pros at this time. I can say some departments are willing and eager to work with one another and help the success of the company reach it's possible potential, They have a hard working tech support department that works 24-7 as well as good management as far as the tech support division goes.
Their CEO is also quite passionate about the direction he wants to take the company and has been one of the few CEO's i can honestly say, is willing to talk and discuss his ideas with anyone and everyone. Not an unapproachable gentleman to say the least.

Cons
Sadly, there are several cons at this company. Over the last few months Rand has hit a number of bad bumps in the road with many managers, from a number of departments, leave the company or put in their two weeks notice, the department hardest hit was sales.
Other cons:
- Training for Sales reps is sorely lacking. Whilst in the first 2-3 weeks you are given reading material and attend some 'online' training, Overall it doesn't truly prepare one for what is needed. Many questions are still asked by would-be customers which one cannot answer, An employee must find an internal partner to find the answer and then get back to the customer. There is no follow up to ascertain your competence knowledge of the product, which in-as of itself is, very complicated to explain to many customers, and some who seek to find a simpler solution.
- Daily activities are very laborious, many of the other tasks, entering notes, creating quotes, providing webinars, are extremely tedious and manual. Rand offers the low end of the software Sales Force which essentially means the service hardly has any automated features for one to take advantage of! Quotes, especially should be automated for easier completion.
- Sales commission isn't desireable, while being in inside sales, one only earns a very small amount per unit booked. However, that is based upon whether or not you're teamed up with an outside sales rep who can book the opportunities you find. Many times I found myself following up with my outside sales team, to insure proper follow up was being provided to the customer, as I was asked not to follow up with clients on several occassions, and therefore lost a lot of commission in that process. In other words, you are not in charge of how much potential commission you can earn as it lay in the hands of someone else to close your deals. Not an ideal environment for someone who thrives on being able to work directly with the customer 1 on 1 and can affect their commissions directly!
- Sales credit/award
This is another issue i had, our team would be measured on how many 'units' one can book in a month or quarter, which, once again, was squarely set on the shoulders of outside sales to complete, if you had one outside sales rep that didn't know how to do their job, your numbers looked terrible regardless of number of calls, webinars, etc. And one would be 'let go' due to poor numbers. How does one have poor results when it's not 100% in their control? Also awards and credit would be given but awards were never announced, they would just 'appear' on someone's desk. My understanding on how one 'earned' an award, it was based on number of units booked. but once again, it had been an unfair scenario if you were stuck with a bad outside sales rep and your numbers looked bleak! But somehow that reflected poorly on you?
- Sales Leadership
Contrary to what others may think, sales leadership is/was non existent and could still be. Some individuals (who are no longer there) blatantly had favorites, never discussed ideas or issues that came up, and/or didn't want to handle confrontation. If you're a leader, one must handle the negatives as well as the positives of the job. Furthermore, many benefits were given to individuals in the sales division while there was old leadership in place. While that leadership is no longer there, one can surmise that may no longer be the case.
Work/Life Balance
- I felt that the long hours there didn't equate to much. Many people would either leave early (including past management) and getting there early didn't seem to make much difference in the quality of customers I had.
- Overall direction of the company
While I feel that the CEO is a great man, I am hard pressed (as well as others) to understand Rand's move into the consumer GPS market. Over the years the consumer GPS market has taken a nose dive and while some people wouldn't mind purchasing a gps unit. Most just default to the maps on their phones, googlemaps/Mapquest, or buy a Rand McNally atlas. Not to mention most vehicles now have GPS built in.
- Promotion or moving within the company
Non-existent, one or two individuals have found a niche, it's a tightly weaved niche. Good luck finding any advancement or movement within this company.
- Online Store
This is a little sad, they have one gentleman who handles all online store purchases, sometimes he is assisted by another individual, but honestly how can you rest all those calls on one gentelmen, especially if he calls out sick? People have literally called complaining that they left messages and haven't heard back in days! This is sad that we treat people this way who have either paid for a product or are looking to purchase our product!

Advice to Senior Management
My Advice to Management,
- Make sure, going forward, metrics are fair and make sense. that they do not favor one individual without taking into consideration their efforts/work ethic.
- Provide follow up training, create a reference guide for people to review, make this mandatory to keep sales at peak levels!
- Invest in your sales people's success and you will see them thrive.
- Offer a better commission structure than the one you currently have.
- Invest into a more automated Sales Force tool! Make the job easier for your employees, not harder.
- Quality of quantity. Many discussions i heard, while there were "Hi, you want... oh you already have? ok nevermind" I've had those conversations as well only to learn that there was an opportunity for our product after all. Proper sales training not just on the product but sales itself would be a good thing to have! Look into Sales Acumen training.
- Written sales governance! This is sorely needed instead of making the rules up as you go! This could really hurt you in the long run!
- Territories should be divided more evenly and not east/west/north/south. Everyone should have a little of this and that. to make a more even playing field, if you have one particular area that is tough, then you should divvy that up with the rest of the team, not leave it all in the hands of one individual.

Pros
I've been with Rand McNally for less than a year but already it has become one of my favorite places to work. I'm empowered to do my job! It is liberating. At my old company, there were armies of people getting in the way of progress. At Rand McNally, I give my thoughts and ideas of what to do and management so far has embraced them. I'm encouraged to move quickly to get things done. When I've needed to spend money to accomplish something, I've always been given the go ahead. It's a great place to be.

Cons
Rand McNally is clearly a company in transition. There is mostly new executive management and it's clear that they want to accomplish a lot. This has made things very uncomfortable for a lot of the old employees. It's not always clear what is going on, but I think a lot of the old employees are being fired. This past week, I heard that someone was fired for coming in late. I know this person and yes she comes in late. Like 10 every day. I can see why management would have a problem with that. My sense is they are trying to clean house.

Advice to Senior Management
I personally like what I see happening at the company. Lots of energy going into new products and building the business and not letting people get in the way of progress. I say keep going and if you run over some of the people working against you, so be it.

Pros
The positive side of working here has always been the people. So many great co-workers that made it fun to go to work every day and you really felt that you could accomplish something as a team. Other benefits include casual atmosphere ... well, the benefits kind of end there.

Cons
Having said that the positive side of working here has been the people, it must be said that this is changing because so many people are jumping ship. Why are so many people leaving? Because it has been years without substantial or even any pay increase, vacation time has been cut, leadership is ineffectual at best and some might even say clueless. There is no innovation, we are simply attempting to ride on the coat tails of our competitors. Product owners are absent or even non-existent. Many of the valuable long time Rand McNally employees were forced out only to be replaced by sock puppets of the private equity firm that currently owns the Rand McNally name. Morale is at subterranean levels and I think you would be hard-pressed to find an employee with a positive outlook.

Advice to Senior Management
In all fairness, most of these issues began under the previous CEO and the current CEO is pretty hamstrung by the private equity ownership but it seems like very little is being done to slow the rapid decay.When we see so many of our co-workers (co-workers who at one point were really passionate about the Rand McNally name and company) leaving for greener pastures, the rest of us can't help but wonder if we are making a mistake by staying on. I know you want to improve morale, the easiest way to do that is to start compensating people. Competitive pay increases, 401k matching, invest in your employees, develop products in-house don't just try to play catch up with Garmin. Show us that our loyalty and dedication is not misguided. Give us a reason to care again.

Pros
Update on senior management - Sr VP of Sales just left, Director Field Services just left, CFO left a few months back,
Controller just left, VP of Product Management recently left - upper management has been obliterated! No stability or direction it seems. Still there are a lot of good workers there but all the jumping ship is liable to drive more people away and disaster will become a self fulfilling prophecy.

Cons
Future looks bleak; It feels like Patriach partners wants to sell the company and they are trying to make the financials look good. There was a rumor that an offer had been made for the company but the price wasn't high enough.

Pros
I've been a Rand McNally employee for more than ten years and I have never felt more optimistic about the company's future. We seem to have a good plan in place with many new and exciting products in various stages of development. Yesterday, at a town hall meeting, the senior leadership was discussing what the company would look like at the end of the decade. This is a big change from what we've seen in the past. Previously, it was always about getting through the quarter, never about what we could become. I am very positive about the future of this company and plan to be around to see what we look like in another ten years.

Cons
We are a very lean company. Our appetite for doing things exceeds our resources to do them. People can feel over worked as a result. However, because there is so much to do, days go by in a blink and most employees get to do more than they would elsewhere.

Advice to Senior Management
Empower your employees to an even greater extent.

Pros
Rand McNally is a great place if you're hungry to take on anything that comes your way. There is opportunity here to get a diverse array of experience in project and even industry, which builds your skill set and experience. It's up to people to realize this early on, get out of their cubes and get to know and build rapport with other like-minded doers in the company.
There are quite a few people at Rand, many of whom are in executive roles, who care deeply about the future of the company, its customers, and its people. This shows and I have deep respect for many of my superiors who have worked tirelessly to better the company.

Cons
Benefits are not competitive. Company culture is fairly silo-ed; it could be a more fun and motivating work environment.

Advice to Senior Management
Rand McNally's best asset, aside from its amazing brand, is its people. The best thing the company can do at this point is to nurture those who demonstrate dedication and results. Taking an interest in the development of employees and letting them know you appreciate their work can go a long way in retention, and it costs nothing to management to do either of these things.